The Late Great GOP

It ain't over til it's over, and I don't want to start singing the elegy just yet, but the stench of putrefaction has grown very thick, and there seems to be the sound of low and sonorous bells pealing in the distance, growing louder by the day.

Republicans are not people of honor, so there's practically no way for them to act in good faith.

They can't be trusted - shit, they can't even trust each other.

They're lost, and at this point, not worth the effort to find them and finish burying whatever's left of them.

We have to let them go.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion: Kevin McCarthy plumbs new depths of political cowardice

Democratic and Republican negotiators agreed last week to create a high-level, expert commission with subpoena power to conduct an examination of the Jan. 6 Capitol invasion, one of the lowest moments in U.S. history. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday threw his negotiators under the bus, condemning the compromise and vowing to oppose the bill creating the commission when it comes to a House vote Wednesday. This is cowardice, distilled.

Many Republicans do not want an impartial panel to remind the public of their party’s role in the event. A fair inquiry would examine how GOP lawmakers fed the election lies that inspired the mob, and how they built Jan. 6, which should have featured a pro forma counting of electoral votes, into a showdown over the 2020 presidential election. Republican lawmakers who signed a spurious lawsuit seeking to overturn the results bear some guilt; those who went on to object to the counting of electoral votes from several swing states bear even more.

An honest proceeding would also require Mr. McCarthy to testify under oath about his eyewitness experience of the violence — and to then-President Donald Trump’s apparent indifference. Mr. McCarthy has resisted offering the public a frank accounting of his interactions with Mr. Trump, including on a phone call during which Mr. McCarthy reportedly begged Mr. Trump to stop the mob. Mr. McCarthy has concluded that whatever political benefits he receives from embracing Mr. Trump are worth the price of his integrity.

- more (pay wall) -

Politico:

McConnell opposes House’s bipartisan Jan. 6 commission bill

Former President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are also against the commission proposal.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Republicans on Wednesday that he is opposed to an independent commission investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection as envisioned by the House, casting serious doubt on the future of the proposed bipartisan panel.

McConnell had signaled on Tuesday that he was undecided but came down more firmly after another day of deliberations, according to a person with direct knowledge of his remarks on Wednesday morning. He explained his stance in more detail on the Senate floor, calling the House’s proposal “slanted and unbalanced” and saying the ongoing congressional investigations are sufficient to probe the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol.

“It’s not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress,” McConnell said.

The Kentucky Republican’s stance suggests that legislation creating a bipartisan commission on the Capitol riot — a bill set to pass the House later Wednesday — is likely doomed to fall to a Senate filibuster if major changes aren’t made. Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) had forged a deal with House Democrats to allow equal partisan representation on the 10-member commission and to give it subpoena power to focus on the events of Jan. 6.

Yet Republicans are now wrestling with how much more they want to litigate the presidency of Trump, whom McConnell no longer speaks to or talks about.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that regardless of McConnell’s stance, the Senate will vote on the commission bill. The measure will need the support of 10 Senate Republicans to pass.

“The American people will see for themselves whether our Republican friends stand on the side of the truth or on the side of Donald Trump’s big lie,” Schumer said on Wednesday morning.

A number of House and Senate Republicans have expressed support for the commission, but the weight of the party's leaders is now beating back that sentiment. Both Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are opposed to the commission proposal, and McConnell’s opposition will further pressure rank-and-file Republicans to oppose it.

Deeper Into The Woods

"We ain't outa the woods yet" is pretty much the hallmark of understatement for 2020.

I think we may be only about halfway to the darkest shittiest parts of the woods right now, and without some pretty great leadership and extremely adept maneuvering, no amount of bread crumbs will get us safely out of this mess.

Observing Joe Biden these last few weeks, I've been thinking about how his usual "happy warrior" demeanor just isn't there in the same way it's always been. I've found myself wondering if it's because he's lost a step or two, but then I figured (and had partially confirmed) that as the presumptive nominee, he's been getting security briefings.

We all imagine how fucked up things are - can you imagine what it must be like to get your worst fears confirmed, but then hear there's a shit load more that's even worse than your worse fucking fears?

I can only guess, of course, but it seems obvious to me that Joe's got the weight of the whole world on him right now.

So anyway, here we are, not quite two thirds of the way through 2020, and we've got a pandemic killing one of us every 55 seconds, we have a battalion of Daddy State monsters loose in the corridors of power, we've got Murder Hornets, Derechos and now Fire Tornadoes.

But the really bad news is...

...Wade Davis, Rolling Stone:

Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity. There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon. The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months. There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found. And it must be safe. If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.

Pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors. In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed close to half of Europe’s population. A scarcity of labor led to increased wages. Rising expectations culminated in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that marked the beginning of the end of the feudal order that had dominated medieval Europe for a thousand years.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

COVID’s historic significance lies not in what it implies for our daily lives. Change, after all, is the one constant when it comes to culture. All peoples in all places at all times are always dancing with new possibilities for life. As companies eliminate or downsize central offices, employees work from home, restaurants close, shopping malls shutter, streaming brings entertainment and sporting events into the home, and airline travel becomes ever more problematic and miserable, people will adapt, as we’ve always done. Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.

To be sure, financial uncertainty will cast a long shadow. Hovering over the global economy for some time will be the sober realization that all the money in the hands of all the nations on Earth will never be enough to offset the losses sustained when an entire world ceases to function, with workers and businesses everywhere facing a choice between economic and biological survival.

Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history. But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington. For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.” As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

Davis goes on to lay out just how fucked he thinks we are.

And while I can't say he's wrong to think what he thinks, I will say that we've been down before.

The one thing 45* has been right about - the only thing, and he's warped and perverted it almost totally beyond recognition - but the one thing is that we just go on. We fuck up. We fall on our face. We get back up. And we keep going.

Of course, it'd be nice if we could recognize the need for some fundamental change once in a while, and it'd be really nice if we could see the need and make the changes before all the shit hits the fuckin' fan.

Anyway, we have to make some real adjustments. Trump just pretends he's some fuckin' cat that jumped up on the table and landed with all four paws in 4 different bowls of steaming hot soup, and then tries to make like he meant to do exactly that, and what are you guys laughing at - you're the idiots, not me - oooh look, a mouse.

And that's kinda what we've allowed fuckups like Trump to pull. We have to try harder not to let them off the hook this time. If we want government to be held to account, then we have to dig in and insist that some of these big fish get fried.

Numbers Don't Lie

Sometimes people say you can get numbers to say anything you want them to say, and in a sense that's kinda true, but the real deal is pretty simple.  In almost every case, it's a matter of people lying about the numbers; or people claiming the numbers are saying something that's not quite the truth.  So, to borrow a meme - Numbers don't lie to people; people lie to people.  Or somethin'.  Grains of salt are in order here, but...

Anyway, here's some interesting math for ya via Democratic Underground regarding the Virginia GOP's attempts to change the way Electoral College votes are apportioned in a presidential election:

Barack Obama won 51.16% of the vote. Under the new bill he would have won four of the states 13 electoral votes.

And do you know how much it counts an Obama voter as? (It's 4/13 divided by 51.16%. I'll wait. Do it. Get a calculator. You'll crap yourself.)

Yup - it's right about three fifths.  Each Obama voter would be counted as 3/5 of a Romney voter.  Ring any bells for anybody?

So the Repubs hold their little confab at an Antebellum Plantation - where one of the main Party Strategy topics was how to appeal to minority voters - and this is one of the things they came up with?  How is it these guys even stay in business?

Fire With Fire

From Dayton Daily News:

Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.

I've lost count of the times some good smart Dems have stepped up and put themselves on the line over these issues, and I hope we can look forward to a lot more.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Rollin' 'Em

Along the same lines as the recent  "issue" of contraception, Obama follows it up with Eric Holder saying DoJ intends not to defend a provision in the Veterans' Bennies law that denies benefits to same-sex spouses.

It's not clear to me that they're saying the VA will stop denying those bennies, it's just that if you're denied and you challenge, then DoJ isn't gonna put up a fight.  Not quite as good as I think it oughta be, but they have to make it look like they're at least trying to follow the law.  There're still problems with the whole Torture and Illegal Imprisonment things out there, but hey - I'll take smallish improvements where I can get 'em.

Anyway, add this one to Contraception (and let's not forget DOMA), and we've got something that's starting to look like a pattern.

Obama is aware that the attitudes have shifted.  People who went along with the Right Radicals on the Culture War crap, thinking they'd get something good in return, are seeing now that there wasn't any real payoff at all - it was a gyp.  The Culture War is the agenda, and what you get for your trouble is fucked with your pants on.

So Obama rolls merrily along.  Once in a while he tosses a big hunk of juicy red meat out the window, and we all get to watch as a smaller and smaller pack of increasingly vicious feral dogs tear into each other trying to get at it.

One other little thing occurs to me.  I think this is looking like Obama is finding his footing, and learning how to use his expertise in Constitutional Law to drive the politics necessary to move his policy agenda forward.  Remember the big stupid show the House Repubs made of reading the Constitution, and requiring that every proposed bill include Constitutional compliance / justification?  I think Obama has taken that in hand like a blackjack and is in the process of wailin' the shit out of 'em with it.  I dunno of course, but it's more fun to watch now than it was just 6 or 8 months ago.

Where'd They Go?

For at least the last 15 years, I've been casting about, looking for anybody still visible and still with some power in the GOP who isn't totally upside down and backwards on every issue I care about.  And it's not a big list, but I don't feel the need to line it out right now because that's not my point.

Here's my point:  If you're wondering why it's so hard to find a Moderate in the GOP, it's because they're all Democrats now.

The graph is from voteview blog.  The big take away seems pretty obvious.  Once you get past Truman and Ike, everything trends in the "Conservative" direction.